McGuinness cleared by Saville probe

Northern Ireland’s Deputy First Minister
Martin McGuinness has been cleared of provoking soldiers on Bloody Sunday by an official report into the killings of 14 civilians.

The report found members of the official IRA fired a number of shots, though it was concluded it was the British paratroopers who shot first during the civil rights march in Londonderry on January 30 1972.

Mr McGuinness, second in command of the provisional IRA in Derry that day, was “probably armed with a Thompson submachine gun”, the Saville Report said.

It said though it is possible he fired the weapon, this cannot be proved. The report concluded: “He did not engage in any activity that provided any of the soldiers with any justification for opening fire.”

Mr McGuinness denied having a sub-machine gun. When asked about the Saville finding that it was probable that he had the weapon, he said: “No”.

He said: “He (Lord Saville) fully pointed the finger of blame for what happened directly at the British Parachute Regiment. (This is)a day of extraordinarily historic significance and one on which the families have been vindicated. It is also a momentous day for truth.”

Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams said: “Saville has put the lies of Widgery into the dustbin of history and with it the cover-up which was authorised of the highest levels within the British establishment and lasted for almost four decades,” he said.

Former Ulster Unionist leader Lord Trimble said the killings were wrong and mistakes had been made in the planning and conduct of the operation on Bloody Sunday.

However, he added: “It would be perverse if the events of Bloody Sunday were used to justify those unjustifiable events that PIRA launched in the 1970s.”

Ulster Unionist leader Sir Reg Empey said: “We cannot continually be dragged back to our darkest years. The question now facing Northern Ireland is whether we continue to pursue costly individual cases or are we, as a society, to concentrate on building a shared future, freed from the mistakes of the past?”